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This morning Jay-Z announced that he wasn't the only new co-owner of the streaming music service TIDAL. Alongside him were Beyonce, Kanye West, Jack White, Daft Punk, Jason Aldean, Nicki Minaj, The Arcade Fire (Win and Regine), Madonna, Rihanna, Usher, J. Cole, Deadmau5, and Alicia Keys. Included in the streaming music service's New content today are exclusive playlists from Aldean, Deadmau5, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Coldplay, and more. With Jay-Z's stock purchase and this move right here, TIDAL becomes an "artist majority owned company."

Cover bands sometime make a living copying the work of others. Their ability to mimic a chosen group is often what makes them desirable to see live. Some big-name artists cover each other’s songs, and it’s typically a nod of admiration. In the app economy, we can’t say the same is true. Rather than a tribute to an art form, ‘copied’ apps pile onto the original, burying it. Facebook might be the best at this practice. With Rooms, they came under fire for copying an eerily similar app named Room. Now, Facebook-owned Instagram seems to have followed suit with Layout.

This week at F8, Facebook presented a basic plan for the next 10 years in development - both inside and outside the social network. Amongst announcements of flying internet drones and updating the Messenger ecosystem, Facebook officials handed off the mic to Oculus. While we expected that Oculus would give us some indicator of the future of the company - or their involvement with Facebook - instead we got a lesson in the science of virtual reality.

A long time ago, when MTV was actually relevant for music, there was a deligthful video called ‘video killed the radio star’ playing almost constantly; as catchy as it was prophetic. Just as Charlie Chaplin was exposed by ‘talkies’, so were radio 'stars' who couldn’t duplicate their musical efforts on the exciting new visual format that was MTV. With Periscope, Twitter is morphing their own platform into something more, something different, something refreshing. Twitter now bridges a gap between immediate and contextual, live and lived-in. It also makes the global technology gap more apparent.

This week Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stood onstage at F8, the social network's developer conference, and spoke about Oculus VR. Zuckerberg showed how 360-degree spherical video would be making its way to Facebook's main news feed with the help of Oculus VR. This same content would be coming to Oculus Rift some time after it'd hit the main news feed. With the Samsung Gear VR (made in collaboration with Oculus VR), the company would also be showing a "Teleportation Station" to give people a glimpse of their offices from a remote location.

There are two ways to look at the situation with Twitter's re-launch of Periscope (for iPhone only). One is a show of power - such a massive number of people use the iPhone - any number of generations of iPhone - that Twitter will develop an app that launches on that platform first, and exclusively (for a short period of time.) The other way to look at the situation is that Twitter is ignoring the first-wave early adopter crowd with Periscope, the same way competing service Meekrat still has no Android service weeks after launch.

Now that Apple is rumored to be releasing a new Apple TV box later this year, citizens of the mobile smart device universe have their respective TV-loving ears perked up once again. Do I need a new Apple TV? Maybe an Amazon Fire TV Stick instead? Perhaps I need to get something like a Roku, or maybe a Chromecast! Or - better yet - I could just use the old laptop that's sitting in, on, or under my desk. The one I replaced years ago, but still works just fine.

When the iPhone was released, the smartphone environment kicked into gear. When Apple released the iPad, tablets began to be produced in earnest. An entire industry is built around accessories made specifically for Apple products. Companies are built creating products that work on Apple products alone. Apple is one of the most successful companies in history - not just because they create products that sell well, but because those products can move the industry. Case in point at the time this article is set to be published: the Apple Watch.

Virtual reality was all the talk at the Game Developers Conference this week. From Sony to Valve to Oculus to Sulon, a slew of companies showed off virtual reality technology that they say, will carry us well into the future.

Of course, this is something we’ve heard before from hardware makers. Oculus has shown its Rift product off for years, arguing that it can succeed in virtual reality where so many other companies have failed. Now several other companies are arguing the same.

In a recent chat with Forbes, Google’s Sundar Pichai turned a few heads by noting Google+ would be considered as parts — not the sum of those parts. Rather than a social network, Plus would be a stream. And Photos. And Communications. Adding a bit of fuel to the fire was the subsequent dismissal/resignation of Dave Besbris as the head of Google+. Besbris took over for Vic Gundotra, who spearheaded Plus from inception. With a new boss in Bradley Horowitz, the circumstance around Plus might sound confusing. That’s because they kind of are.